“We can watch another movie, or we can talk about what brought you to my doorstep.”
She didn’t quite believe he wanted to see her or spend time with her. There was something bothering him. She sensed it, and she had a bad feeling that whatever it was might somehow involve her.
“Movie,” he chose.
“Okay. Well, can I get you anything? Some popcorn? Something to drink? All I have is soda, water, and juice, though.”
“Water is fine. Thank you.”
She rounded the counter that separated the kitchen area from her living area and retrieved two bottles of water from the refrigerator. When she looked back, Ben had moved to stand by a shelf where she displayed a few photos. They were the only hint of her past she kept, but they tied to her childhood and not the trouble she found as an adult. He reached for a snapshot that she had in a silver frame she’d found for a couple of dollars at a thrift store.
She studied his face as he stared at the picture. His expression was unreadable, and she wondered what held him transfixed. The photo was a shot of her with her parents before they died. Only five years old, she sat on the hood of her father’s car with her parents standing on either side of her, holding on to her so she didn’t slide off. Her smile was awkward, too wide and frozen in the middle of sayingcheese.
Her parents, though, looked wonderful. Both were dressed casually and appropriate for the summertime weather. Their smiles were wide and happy, their eyes sparkling with life. It’s how she preferred to remember them. Vibrant, in love with each other, in love with her.
“Here’s your water,” she said as she approached, holding the bottle out to him.
Ben didn’t move. One hand held the frame firmly while the other traced the photo along the glass.
“Ben. What’s wrong?”
Goosebumps rose on her skin, and she had a radical thought that maybe she misjudged him. He was acting strangely, and lately, she was suspicious of strange behavior.
“Ben. You’re freaking me out. Why are you looking at my picture like that?”
He finally turned the force of his gaze on her. The molten chocolate of his eyes swirled with questions and confusion. He pointed to the frame while keeping her ensnared in his stare.
“This is you?”
“Well, the little girl is me. The adults are my parents. Now it’s your turn to answer a question. Why are you looking at the picture like that?”
He looked thunderstruck. “You’re not Charlotte Redding, are you?”
One bottle of water slipped from her hand and landed with a light thud against the carpet.
“What?” she whispered.
He held the picture up as if comparing it to how she looked today. Suddenly he was in front of her, crowding her space, and she sucked in a startled breath.
“Holy hell. Itisyou.”
Charlotte backed up a couple of steps. “I think maybe you’d better tell me exactly who you are, or you can get out of my apartment right now.”
He placed the picture on an end table and held his hands up to show he meant her no harm. “I’m sorry. I know you’re confused, but bear with me a second. Please.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he had to say, but she found herself nodding anyway.
“Do you remember around the time this picture was taken, maybe later in the year, you helped a kid in your class? A boy with a terrible stutter who was bullied.”
Charlotte felt her legs weaken. She did remember. He had been a short, skinny boy who kept to himself. He never spoke, and the teacher never called on him to answer a question or read aloud in class. It wasn’t until she heard the cruel teasing that she even knew the boy stuttered.
She stared at Ben with a mixture of awe and suspicion. “How could you possibly know that?”
“You went right up to the bullies and put yourself between them and the boy. Then you proceeded to yell at them. You gave them shit for how they treated him, and then you called them out on all the things that were wrong with them. Thumb-sucker, bed-wetter, couldn’t read, couldn’t throw a ball, whatever you thought of. You made one of them cry, but they all walked away and left the boy alone after that.”
She recalled that day vividly as he spoke, each word out of his mouth describing exactly what happened. Except for one thing he did not mention. Before that day, she had been well-liked by her classmates. She’d been invited to play dates and birthday parties. One little boy even asked her to be his girlfriend, a request that had her scrunching up her nose in disgust and telling the boy she would never have a boyfriend because boys were gross.
After that day, after she did the right thing as her parents taught her to do, she was no longer popular at school. The other kids ignored her. They didn’t tease the boy anymore, but neither did they want anything to do with her. The invitations stopped coming. She went from being a favorite in her class to being a nobody.
